
Pass JT'^- S" } 
Book -K 



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M o ]sr s 



.NATIONAL VICTORIES 



NATIONAL SORROW. 



PREACHED, APRIL 23cl, 1865, 

IN THK PLYMOUTH CHURCH. 

By the Pastor, E. P. POWELL. 



SMITH i I'O.STEH, PIUXTICKS, OPPOSITE LAWREXCK IIOTKL. 



N 



I 
SERM OI^S 



OK EECEKT 



NATIOx\AL VICTORIES, 



NATIONAL SORROW. 



PREACHED, APRIL 23D, 1865, 

IN THK pr^YMOUTH CHURCH, 

By the Pastor, E. P. POWELIi. 



r 



§tfltian, pich., 

SMITH A FOSTKU, PUINTEKS, OPPOSITE LAWRENCE IIOTKL. 
1865. 






n 



^ 



1 



SERMON, 

APPllOPEIATlS TO THE OBSEQUIES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 



John 11, 50. — "Consider that it is expedient foi- us that one man should 
<lie for the people, and that the whole Nation perish not. " 

May 18th, 1860, the American people met at Chicago, by 
Delegates, to elect a Candidate to rule over twenty-iive degrees 
<tf latitude and sixty degrees of longitude. Thirty millions ot 
people, recognizing the fact that liberty can be preserved only 
inider due restj-aints, sought voluntarily a Chief Magistrate. 
They looked at MoLean, who, among our Judges was in 
wisdom dignity and judgment, Chief before the Chief Justice. 

They looked at William H. Seward, who was, without 
doubt, the choice of a majority of the Republican party. — 
Seward had led us as no other Statesman ever did. Clay wan 
the peoples friend , \Yebster the peoples defender, JeiFerson 
the peoples oracle, Jackson the peoples pride ; but history will 
write that William H. Seward, during the first century of Ame- 
rican Independence, was the real peoples leader. Never going 
but one point ahead of us, he patiently waited for his logic to 
take its etfect, and the people were sure to come up to him; 
then onward just one step more, and he waited for us to takt; 
the same step, and take it we did. Me gave us our political 
passv^ords ; and in twenty-five years induced more progress in 
l)olitical views than perhaps all other Statesmen from Hamil- 
ton down to the present. .Men with the same views achieved 
nothing with the popular will, because they were only 
agitators. As radical as Phillips or Gai-rison, Seward 
led the j>e()ple. while I'hillijis strove to drive them. Yet the 



4 Sbkmon Appropkiate to thb 

Convention passed by Seward, in their choice for President. 
Old men who loved his greatness and gloried in his strength, 
frat down like children and wept. 

They looked to Attorney General Bates. In him some saw 
the model gentleman, who by a wise conservatism, reserved 
dignity, and soundness of judgment would be just the man to 
combine conflicting elements. He was to be the oil on the 
waters of threatened secession. But tliey passed by Bates. 

They looked, I am sorry to add, at Simon Cameron, the 
Simon Magus of American politics. 

All these were men of note, ability, and great personal and 
political strength. But it was as when Samuel was sent to the 
family of Jesse to anoint a King over Israel. Eliab passed be- 
fore him, and he said surely this is the Lords anointed. But 
the ].iord said look not on his countenance, for the Lord seeth 
not as man seeth ; for man looketh on the outward appearance ; 
but the Lord looketh on the heart. And nine other sons pass- 
ed by, but the Lord refused them all. But David the youngest 
was tending sheep, and when the prophet insisted on his being 
sent for, the Lord said This is he, anoint him. 

Thus our old leaders and Statesmen were passed by, and 
the people invited to give their suffrages to Abraham Lincoln. 
The name was somewhat familiar to the American people, as 
that of the only man on the prairies who could face Stephen A. 
Douglas. The clioice was simply a direction of Providence. 
Lincoln never would have been the choice of the majority of 
voters, had not a Convention first selected him. Seward, or 
Chase, or McLean were decidedly more in popular lavor. A 
man who never in his life received but one years school edu- 
cation ; a farm boy chopping a clearing in the forest at ten ; 
a hired hand on a river flat boat at nineteen ; at twenty-one » 
rail splitter, living in a log cabin of his own building; at twenty- 
two a boat builder, at twelve dollars a month ; at twenty-four 
a store keeper, and poor at that ; at twenty-five a Postmaster ; 
»t twenty-six a Surveyor ; at twenty-seven a member of the 
Legislature; at twenty-eight a Lawyer; at thirty-five Presiden. 
tial Elector; at thirty-seven a Representative in Congress; at 
fifty-one President of the the United States. 

He was not the first choice of the people ; but lie was t.h« 



Obsequies of Arraham Lincoln. 5 

choice of God. A work was to be done, which we can see 
now, no man could or would have achieved, as lias Lincoln. 
A keener Statesman would have had his preconceived views, 
and endeavored to compel ev6nts to develop in a given chan- 
nel. The glory of this Administration is that it has not in- 
quired of precedents, but moved with the movements of Provi- 
dence. Lincoln taught us a new rule of statesmanship "The 
Logic of Events," and the most hopeful indication of the new 
Administration is, that President Johnson declares he shall be 
guided by the same rule. The man who should have striven 
to guide the past four years, by previous years, would have 
ruined us. Seward with that keenness of intellect that cleaves 
marble, had his party ties, his preconceived views, and would 
probably have run afoul of Providence. 

The work to be done was to watch the foul fiend of Slavery 
in its death struggle ; to hold the helm of State in a most 
terrible civil war; to proclaim liberty to the captive; to enshrine 
himself in the heaits of his people next to Washington ; and 
after a laborious, saddening Adininistration in the hour of 
victory, alas to die for his people and his coimtry. 

The character of our departed President was new ; it was 
a western American conglomerate, petrified by trial into a 
marble as hard and pure as that of Paros. He was a western 
Yankee. Losing the penuriousness of the Yankee who delves 
the rocks of Connecticut ; made generous by the fertility of 
the prairies, his mind widened out to a broader scope by the 
rich valleys of our great rivers, the western Yankee adds a 
quaint coat of mail to his character — a humor that protect* 
liim from the wear of business and care. Lincoln Avas a re- 
presentative man of the Great West. His humoi-, scorned by 
the sedater statesman, looked on at first distrustfully by the 
patriot, no doubt saved him from being crushed with anxiety 
and labor. We could not, and cannot appreciate how terrible 
a weight, we as the American people, j)laeed on his shoulders ; 
nor how providential was that minute trait of character that 
stood by him to lift the heavy helmet from his brain. When 
Kings used to rule, instead of having Ministers to rule for them 
they relieved themselves by retaining at Court a humorous; 
jester to stir them to laughter. The humor of Lim-oln was- 



Sermon Appropriate to tue 

the Kings fool of his character j but it bore him as important 
;i part as liissedater judgment. 

Another prominent and even rcmarkaV)le cliaracteristic of 
the deceased was his kindliness of disposition. He seemed trvily 
horn to be the Father of a Nation. 

" Tyrant !" He was the last man in America to be styled 
tyrant. His soul was as gentle as Cowper's, or the Apostle 
John's. He Avas incapable of ill will. Only his oath and his 
duty ever made him the helmsman in a time of war. And it 
was just this grand royal benevolence of heart, that made his 
assassination the death of the Rebellion. We were just about 
to follow his beloved guidance to an amnesty, we fear. Far 
sighted lovers of their country had only one fear, that the one 
who had steered thi'ough the sea of war, might not weather 
the breakers along the shore of peace. Would it do to par- 
don treason? Could we, as was hinted, "aiford to be gene- 
rous ?" The old ship of the Confederacy was surely sinking ; 
would it do to calk it, if only they Avould run up the Stars and 
Stripes, and set ashore their cargo of slaves ? We knew their 
ship was not far from sinking, when that crafty old Mississippi 
rat. Hangman Foote, took to the watei'. It seemed more cer- 
tain when Hunter, Stephens and Campbell ran out the white 
Hag, saying, "let us negotiate." The fate of the Rebellion 
was still more certain as we heard the tramp of Sherman, 
storming States and outflanking the Alleghanies. But when 
bavis fled, and Lee surrendered, and Richmond was ours, we 
l>egan to remember the goodness of the Presidents heart, 
and we feared that after all, Davis might not sink. But, my 
friends, they scuttled their own ship, when they shot Abraham 
Lincoln. We know now their doom. Atnnesty is no longer 
thought of for wholesale murderers. The nation, almost unani- 
mously, shouts down to that world where God consigns his 
rebels, saying, make way <lown there for your friends ; prepare 
for those who cannot lind a government gord enough on this 
globe. His secuiod Administration found Lincoln a largely 
dirtei'cnt man from wliat the lirst found him. He "was battered 
liy Providences into a nobler and deeper cliaracter. He had 
lcarn('(l a wider grasp of Statesmanshijt ; and above all he had 
jf:iiiHMl that his only hope was in CJrod. What could be our 



OrSKQUKS of AnU.VHAM TilNCOl.N. 1 

consolation, if we did not fed tliat we sliould moot onr dear 
President among tlie saved of Jesus. Sweet to us are those 
treasured words of his, "I love Jesus." 

Probably almost every mind in the country, classes Lincoln 
witli Wasliington, For some rt'.ison they seem nearer each 
other than any other two Presidents; unless it be Adams and 
Jett'erson. Adams and Jett'erson were the two Philosophers 
and Statesmen : Washington and Lincoln the two Fathers of 
their country. Alike, and yet largely unlike, each UmI us 
through a great peril; and with a wisdom born of a ]tur<! 
heart, more than of a great brain. l^'ach was bittcn-ly bcliecl 
in his life, but unanimously lam<'iil;>d in his deal!', even l»y 
those lie had conquered. Each was elected to a second term 
of office ; and that too by a spontaneous outburst of national 
confidence. Yet were they unlike in this ; Washington was a 
creative genius, out of chaos producing a stable government, 
a government uni<iue and wonderful. Lincoln lacked the con- 
structive ]»ower, and waited that affairs might shape tlu^m- 
selves. Washington was his superior in the tinisluMl courtesies 
of life, but not in the kindliness of his natin-e. Fqual 

in patriotism, efjual in purity, Lincoln stands se(H)nd only to 
the Father of his Country. And now as we look bacrk over 
ais Administration, we find little that we cannot a])]irove: we 
find nothing to blame. God led him, and he was willing, 
after a while, to be led. When he erred, he erre-l less than 
would others ; Avhen he did wisely, he did it with his heart as 
well as his pen. Oh how much have we to thank God, that in 
tlie hour of trial lie gave us a real patriot, never selfish, never 
untrue to his country. How terribly in his power should we 
lie, if some ambitious unscrupulous man W(u-e ['resident, with 
such an army at his command. 

But no one, ever for a moment, distrusted Lincoln. iAFeekly 
he bore his honors.. For his country he thought, for his 
country ruled ; and with tlu^ almost visiljle care; and presence 
of God, he led us through th<- darkest hours, full uj) to the 
dawn of peace, with all the love of the nation centered in him, 
and then in the very hour of t riunipli, when we thonght, him 
for the first time safe, just returned from a visit to the charncl 
house of secession, the liorrable deed was done. ]\Liy we 



8 Sermon Appropriate to the 

never again suffer what we suffered one week ago. The word 
flew on the telegraj^hic wire, "The President is shot." I 
shall never forget the sickening effect of those words. But we 
loved him. Yet he is — dead. But who could gain by it ? Yet 
he is dead. Vengeance on the assassin we cried ! But that 
will not restore our dear President to life. Like Rachel mourn- 
ing for her children, we would not be comforted for he was 
not. He had a right to reap the fruit of his labors. But he 
cannot ! Dead ! Dead ! Would to God I had died for thee ! 
Oh Lincoln ! My Father ! My Father ! Assassinated ! Oh 
how an American hates that cowardly word. Henceforth he 
will hate it with a double detestation. 

But alas we needed the blow. We needed it to waken us to 
the horrid nature of treason. We were so tired of war that we 
were willing to buy peace at a sacrifice of justice and safety. 
We needed it to unite the people, and under a common loss, to 
bind us for a common effort. We needed it to rouse the 
whole loyal heart against northern sympath) lor treason — the 
diabolical spirit that could rejoice in assassination. We needed 
it to illustrate the fiend ishn ess and fury of arch rebels. We 
needed it to shame every decent man in the South, and make 
him blush for his cause. We needed it to make us rely on 
God, and not on an arm of flesh. We needed it as a punish- 
ment for our terrible wickedness, in insulting God for all the 
preceding victories. 

"With silence only as their benediction, 

God's angels come; 
When in the shadow of a great affliction 

The soul sits dumb. 

Yet would we say what every heart approveth. 

Our Fathers will, 
Calling to Him, the dear one whom he loveth, 
, Is mercy still. 

Not upon ua, or ours, the solemn angel, 

Hath EVIL wrought. 
The funeral anthem is a glad evangel. 
The good die not. 

God called our President; but wo lose not wholly 

What he had given : 
He lives on Earth in thought and deed, as truly 

As in Uis Heaven." 



Obseques of Abraham Lincoln. 9 

We needed it to teach us how to curse the Spirit of 
Slavery. Frequently during this war we have read great re- 
wards offered lor the assasination of Lincoln, Seward, Beechev, 
Greeley, Butler. Only last December one southern paper 
published the following: "One miUion dollars wanted to 
have peace by the first of March. If the citizens of the 
Southern Contederacy will furnish me with the cash, or good 
securities for one million dollars, I will cause the lives of 
Abraham Lincoln, William H. Seward, and Andrew Johnson 
to be taken by the 1st of March." What land, but one, who.e 
inhabitants were often stained with the blood of murdered 
slaves wouhi have tolerated such an offer. It was more than 
probable that the act was paid for according to the terms here 
demanded. Not Booth alone killed our President ; but every 
man who has cherished a spirit of lawlessness, all who have 
sympathized with the murderous spirit of slavery. 

In the soul of the perpetrator there seems to have been 
blended such elements as these: the child of illegality, hiraselt 
licentious, and therefore heartless, he was callous to faner 
nobler emotions. Sympathy with tyranny had taught him to 
hate all who stood in his way. Familiarity with actmg mur- 
ders, had robed crime with romance, and made assassmation 
a play. Criminal habits left him always in the need of money, 
and ready to be bought for villany. But the power that hnal- 
Iv developed, and made active, all these elements, was the de- 
mon of slavery. Stop my friends and think what a viper of 
treason and fury we have fed in our country ^j^?^^"^;^ f ^"'; 
ful in its life; devouring daily the happiness of ^^^^^/^f ^"' ' 
their liberty and their labors; often drinking their blood ^"^ 
making music of their lamentations; yet in its death is slave 
ry most fearful of all. 

men Herod was about to die, he invited to hU palace, al 
the di^tTngnished men of hi. Kingdom. When they were 
lathered, he ordered them flung into dungeons, »<!■.« ;oona« 
he should die, that they be all slaughtered ; for, sa.d he, the peo- 
p et«« mo;™ for me-I will make them ^rea my dymg 
more than living. Slavery saw its death approaehmg and its 
flendi'h spirit determined to leave behind a nat.on of mourn- 



10 Sermon Appropriate to the 

ers. It has well succeeded. Look for a moment at the horri- 
ble grandeur of its mausoleum. At least two millions of 
corpses — stark and bloody, cemented with the tears of thirty 
millions. But that was not enough. It must strike a more 
Bhining mark ; and with what we hope is its last struggle. 
It has assassinated the President. That is what this do- 
mestic instituticn has cost us. It is the hand of God. We 
deserved it— and bow down in tears and prayer. 

And yet this great nation owes it to itself not to give way 
to despair. We have lost our President, but we have not lost 
our God. At the best Lincoln could not have lived but a few 
years ; but He who founded our nation, and has sustained it 
from Washington to Lincoln, is not only the same yesterday 
and to-day, but forever. Spanning over administrations of com- 
parative insignificance. He will give us again, in the future, 
other glorious names to be linked with the Father and Savior 
of his country. Or, perhaps, he has in store for us, a succes- 
sion of administrations as pure and renowned, as those just 
preceding them have been disgraceful and selfish. 

It is pleasantly consoling to think that our great friend suf. 
fered less, than if he had been prostrated by a long illness. — 
It was the nation that felt the bullet, and bore the sufiering. — 
Lincoln knew nothing of his passage, till awaking in another life, 
some angel told him the story of his murder. He who had 
lived so well for his countiy, God granted to die also for his 
country. He lived valuably, he died valuably. As we look 
bncT< at the fruit of his life, we are at a loss to know, if 
after all, his martyrdom may not prove of still greater 
value. 

Had ho died a few months sooner, he would have gone 
when the heats of partisan strife had maligned him. Had the 
|)lot to assassinate him succeeded on the fourth of March, it 
would have been before the fruit of his administrative labors 
had become manifest, we should not have known just how to 
estimate him. There is a time in every earnest noble life, when 
its work is just complete. Happy the man who dies then. — 
Lincoln died without having unravelled a single thread of the 
good he had accomplished. Had he lived a few weeks more, 



Obsequies of Aeuaham Lrxcoi.x. li 

he might, in the kindliness of his disposition, have misjudi^ed 
the needs of the time, and ruined much, that a firmer hand 
would have compacted and Btrengtliened. 

He was killed just when party strife had been dissipate(- — 
when victory had made us more kindly disposed, and his 
death could bind the nation in a new vow of brotherhood. Vic- 
tories made us laugh tf^gether. His murder has made us weej. 
together. Our tears have washed out party lines. I think 
that even thousands of the rebels must be more than convert- 
ed to loyalty, by discovering the fiendish climax of their pari- 
cide. They who could stab their Government, must shudder 
when they see the logical result of their action. 

With anxious hearts we now turn to the man who is 
given us to fill the place of Lincoln. We turn with suspicions 
questionings, and some doubts; and yet with a holier faith 
that God does not intend to cast us oft'; but to call us closer 
to Himself. 

Andrew Johnson is, we trust, a man that M'ill yet be loved 
as purely and fondly as Abraham Lincoln. He has already 
declared the opening of a new policy — a sterner adhesion to 
justice. And why not? weakness, when the nation is in dan- 
ger, is only thirty million times as evil as indecision when a 
single person's safety is involved. As a minister of the gospel 
of peace, I cannot see why we should pardon all treason. — 
Suppose we assure amnesty to all murderers, burglars and as- 
s.-issins. Our lives would soon be too cheap to be worth care. 
To proclaim an amnesty to traitors, is to offer a bounty on 
treason. Those who have seen the most of the IJebellion are 
the best judges of its cure. When General Sherman was in 
Savannah, one of the unterrified said to him, "General you may 
conquer, but you can't subjugate us." He instantly replied, 
" I don't wan't to subjugate you, I mean to kill you, the whole 
of you, if you don't stop this rebellion." Another wanted to 
know how long the war would last " Well, well," said Sher- 
man, " I don't know, perhaps six or eight years ; then twenty 
or twenty-five years of guerrilla warfare, — long enough to de- 
stroy this whole generation, and then we'll begin anew." 
Our President says destroy the leaders, and spare the led. — 



12 Sermon Appropriate to the 

Hang the intelligent managers,^ and send home the ignorant 
tnasses, with Yankee school-masters behind thera. It seems as 
if God had raised up Andrew Johnson, fitting him from his 
very birth, to be the American Hercules, to cleanse the' An- 
gean stables of Slavery, and strangle the Nemean lion of Se- 
cession. 

Lincoln was not a leader, bat a servant of the people ; 
Johnson is a leader. He has had practical experience in states- 
manship and government; he will need it all now. He has 
met and understands Jeflerson Davis, and the Southern lead- 
ers. He it was, that faced them four years ago in the Senate, 
and craved the power to hang their traitorous necks. He is 
the second Andrew of Tennessee. We have prayed for An- 
drew Jackson. God has given us Andrew Johnson. He un- 
derstands the South. He has been through the fire. No man 
like him could have restored Tennessee and brought it out for 
freedom. There is in the Bible a caution to put on that armor 
that will enable us to stand against the wiles of the devil. — 
Lincoln could meet the old Devil of Secession in fair fight. 
Johnson can better detect him in his wily conferences. He is, 
like Lincoln, a peoples man ; from the people — having no 
sympathy with aristocracy, and even greater simplicity of 
manners. He has equal goodness of heart, and greater firm- 
ness. God grant he may prove the Franklin of Presidents. 

It is strange that General Grant, who now is supreme in 
war, and President Johnson, who now is supreme in peace, 
should have both been denounced as drunkards. And yet 
each has been thoroughly exonerated, by abundant testimony. 
It was well that each had a warning at the outset. One, who 
was in Congress with Mr. Johnson, says : "I knew him well, 
and I assure my countrymen that no man can be found of 
more correct habits or principles. He is the friend of the 
people and the enemy of their oppressors." Another writes : 
" I have known him intimately for twenty years. During his 
public life at Washington, I have been in his room hundreds of 
limes. I never saw a drop of liquor there, on any occasion ; 
never saw him drink a drop — never had reason to believe that 



Obsequies of Aiui.miam Lincoln:. 13 

he ever tasted it." You have all probably soon tho-tostimony 
of General Burnsido ; who says : "We met at all hours ot 
the day and nii^'ht, and I never saw hhu taste liquor, n.u- evor 
saw him when ^le had tasted liquor. Ho was no drunkard 
then, and in my opinion is a iirm, loyal and talented statesman." 
. Thank God for this testimony ! Hid of this one fear, the 
ATiieriean people can trust their hopes, under (Jod, to this 
new comer, with contidence. We never d.mhted his will and 
his heart; we do not now doubt his moral character. \\ uh 
this hope in the coming man, we rouse ourselves from the 
gloom of despair, and set to o\ir work. 

He that we loved is gone, hut (iod is still with us. In hn.i 
is our chief hope. If we bear this stroke from him witl> a 
will to obey, to turn from our sins, and act righteously, our 
future shall surely be grander than the imagination can pamt. 
And now, Abraham Lincoln we bid thee a tender farewell. 
It is because we owe thee, under God, so great a debt that we 
mourn for thee so deeply. If tears would restore thee, surely 
this nation would call thee back. We do what we can ; we go 
down in sad procession Lo accompany thee to the borders ot 
another life. Three millions of freedmen come after thee, 
chanting God bless Massa Lincoln. Twenty millions of Iree- 
born come kneeling at thy grave, (iod bless our dear 1 resi- 
dent ' One hundred thousand mothers who gave their boys , 
one hundred thousand wives who gave their husbands; 
tive hundred thousand orphans that g:>vo their fathers, come 
and without exception, pray, 0.i Go-l bless him who so loved 
and cared for our sons and fathers. .,,.,, i • 

One man was found in all America, who could kill Inm. 
Millions would die to restore him to life. 



^4 REQuiEir FOR President LijfcoL:^. 



FOR PRESIDENT ABRAHAM LINCOL^. 



" Now wake the requiem's solemn moan. 
For him whose patriot task is done I 
A Xation's heai't stands still to-Jay 
With horror, o'er his martyred clay ! 

0, God of Peace, repress the ire, 
Which fills our souls with vengeful fire! 
Vengeance is thine, and Sovereign might, 
Alon«, can such a crime requite! 

Farewell,thon good and guileless heart ! 
The manliest tear for thee must start ! 
E'en those at times who blamed thee here. 
Now deeply sorrow o'er thy bier! 

Jesns, grant him sweet repose, 
Who seemed, like thee, to love his foes! 
These loes, like thine, their wrath to spend, 
Have slain their best, their firmest friend." 

GLORIA. 

Ppaiae God from whom all blessings flow ! 
Praise him all sorrowing hearts below! 
Praise him above, ye martyred host, 
Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost. 



SERMON, 



APPEOPRL\TE TO THE OBSEQUIES OF -JEFFERSON DAVIS, 
AND THE SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY. 



Roiuxs, 9, 17.—" The Scripture saith uuto Pharaoh ; even for this 
same piirpose have I raised thee up, that I might show my power in thee, 
and that my name might be declared in all the earth. " 

Every man is raised up for a purpose. Pharaoh, though as 
free to become the emancipator of the Israelites, was never- 
theless an example of stubborn resistance to what seemed 
inevitable ; a vain conceited believer in his own omnipotence ; 
bringing ruin upon liimself and his people, by his arrogant 
resistance to God. It was evident that the days of Hebrew 
slavery were ended ; yet Pharaoh endured plagues upon his 
person, on his neighbors, on crops and trees, on revenue, on 
cattle, and on the lives of all the first bom, before he would 
obey the command to "let my people go." And after they 
had even departed, he pursued them down into the Red Sea, 
and met the fate that he deserved— the death of a fool. 

Now in our own day, God has raised up the precise after- 
type of Pharaoh ; Jeffei-son Davis, the Chairman of the late 
Confederate States. 

A better King in Egypt would have delayed the emanci- 
pation of the Israelites. Abetter Senator than Jefferson Davis 
would have delayed the emancipation of America. His object 
was certainly anything but pious or patiiotic, yet, like Pharaoh, 
his very madness God overruled for glorious and good ends. 

A believer in Calhounism ; first, a repudiator of State 
debts, he grew in wickedness as he grew in years, until he 



1Q Sermon Appropkiate to the 

paid : Go to now, let us destroy this great American Union, 
and get to ourselves a great name. Let us establish a Con- 
federacy of aristocracy, where we may rule perpetually. Its 
corner stone shall be African slavery ; its Kings shall be I 
and mine forever. His object was to aggrandize himself; to 
perpetuate human slavery ; to get free from the irritation of 
honest industry, and equality with northern mechanics. To 
do this he would plot, steal, destroy, repudiate, secede. He 
thoufrht to take off one half of our territory, and make it a 
private possession. There were others equally wicked and 
gnilty, but Davis by common consent, was toreraost of the 
guilty' crew. This was his plan— but the Lord God had an- 
other. The Almighty heard the cry of four millions of bonds- 
men pleading, Oh^Lord ! how long? how long?— Massa Jesus 
come to deliver ? He saw the finest part of America blighted 
by slavery; its streams, that might have been Uned with Low- 
ells and Lynns, idly rolling to the sea. Its inhabitants starv- 
ing with aristocracy, and besotted with inertness; few schools, 
and those taught by Northerners; its soil being exhausted by 
ignorance, and desolation creeping over the whole. God 
meant to put a new soul into the South ; to give it hands that 
could work; heads that could think, and hearts that could 
feel He meant to open the mill-streams to Yankee inventions, 
and send district schools into the sunny valleys. He meant to 
commingle this great nation, and abolish Mason's and Dixon s 
line- to show the poor whites of the South what fools they 
were in hating Yankees ; to end the long discussion concern- 
ing slavery; to preach deliverance to the captive, and to let 
the oppressed go free. And He meant that Jefferson Davis 
should be the main instrument in doing it. You say Zmcolru 
No Lincoln did not go one step fsxrther than Davis compelled 

^'"ToaccompUshthis work of the Lord, needed a peculiar 
man He must first be ambitious-ravened with a desire to 
rule. He must be proudly obstinate, so as to hold on to the 
end He must be able and cunning, in order to lead the 
South. He must be unscrupulous in ways and means. He must 
be an overbearing aristocrat,-the exact and complete type of 
slaveholding aristocracy. It needed a man who could orgamze 



Obsequies op Jefferson Davis. 17 

and consummate a terrible rebellion; who would not hesitate to 
shed rivers of blood, and wade through it to power ; a man 
•who could gloat in the ruin of his country, the defilement of 
its flag, the misery of its mothers ; and rejoice in the prospect 
of the carnage and plunder of Northern cities. All this was 
found in Jefferson Davis. Slavery must die in such a way 
as to make its death its worst curse, that hereafter it might lie 
under the execrations of the whole human race. 

Such was the work that Davis planned — such also the work 
evidently planned for him. Now let us see what he achieved, 
and how well he did it. 

His reign has continued for about four years. At the be- 
ginning of that period, there were fifteen States in which sla- 
very was soundly intrenched. It was estimated that it could 
not be driven from them under half a century. Even Lincoln, 
at his inauguration, distinctly declared his inability, by right, 
to interfere with State Institutions. Had it not been for 
Davis, he never would have touched them. But thanks to aris- 
tocratic Davis, the work of fifty years has been achieved 
in four. Human bondage is a shadow, where it exists in 
name. The Emancipation Proclamation trembled long on 
Lincoln's pen, but every victory of the South made it more a ne- 
cessity. And the Lord hardened Davis' heart, till the contraband 
thing began to be a trench-digger ; aud the spade-user grew 
up into a musket-holder ; and at last a negro regiment march- 
ed into Richmond singing John Brown. John Brown's soul 
has been more troublesome than his body, and what is worse it 
can't be hung. It marched to Missouri and made it a free 
State ; to Maryland, to West Virginia, to Tennessee, and set 
up everywhere new and free governments. It stopped at 
Governor Wise's parlor and opened a negro school. 

Four years ago the sound of war was just breaking over 
us ; and we shuddered to think of our prosperity, our commerce, 
aU under the blight of blood shedding. We dreaded to think 
of the future. Fort Sumpter was the first scene ; Bull Run 
bloody, disastrous, teirifying, was the second ; Ball's Bluff, 
Shiloh, the Peninsula grave-digging succeeded. Buell's blun- 
ders, McClellan's indecisions, Halleck's lines of circumvalla 
tion in the swamps of Corinth, — which ended in taking the 



18 Sermon Appeopriate to the 

village, but nobody in it ; all these sickened us. Then cama 
the ti-eacher) that ruined Pope and defeated Bm-nside. Gene- 
rals bidding for the enemies votes for President; pirates 
ruining our commerce. But what a magnificent change has 
four years wrought. Gettysburg, Chattanooga, New Orleans, 
Mobile, Wilmington ; Sherman's circumnavigation of Secessia; 
Grant's garroting of Richmond ; Lee's army capitulated ; 
Mosby surrendered ; in fact the old giant, armless, headless, 
legless, a miserable trunk of lies and sins and filth, only cum- 
bers the ground till we can learn how best to bury it. 

By the light of recent successes, it is extremely entertain- 
ing to read a certain comic paper, published if I remember 
rightly, last Autumn. It reads: 

" Resolved, That this Convention does explicitly declare, 
as the sense of the American people, (it can't mean the com- 
mon sense,) that after four years of failure, to restore the 
Union by the experiment of war ! during which under the pre- 
tense of a military necessity, or war power higher than the 
Constitution, the Constitution itself has been disregarded in 
every part, and public liberty and private right alike trodden 
down, and the material prosperity of the country essentially 
impaired; justice, humanity, liberty aud the public welfare 
demand that immediate efibrts be made for a cessation of hos- 
tilities." The modern title of this publication is, I believe 
Vallandigham's Platform, — a sort of gang plank thrown out, 
from the wharf of political rats to the ship of State. Its an- 
cient title was Benedict Arnold's Proclamation. 

I think John Brown's soul must have been at Chicago just 
then, and I think if spirits laugh, it laughed right heartily. It 
seems so decidedly fossil, that I am not sure but the Chicago 
Platform was some old petrifaction of the dark ages, come to 
the surface in 1864; or like those antediluvian elephants, that 
sometimes thaw out of the Siberian icebergs, flesh, hide and 
hair all on, and as much like life, as anything that has been 
dead fifty centuries can be. Indeed, may it not be, that that 
convention was a myth, and never occurred at all. In ten 
years its own actors will prove conclusively that they were not 
there. Take Fernando Wood's word for it — if he write his 



Obsequies of Jefferson Davis. 19 

autobiography ten years hence, and it will turn out that not 
Wendell Phillips, but he was High Priest of abolitionism. 

Four years ago a Peace Convention sat in Washington to 
pacify the aristocrats. They recommended that tlie Constitu- 
tion be amended so that Congress should be forbidden 
to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic in- 
stitutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or 
servitude by the laws of said State. Now, instead of such 
^n amendment, we have recommended byCongress, and sure of 
ultimate adoption, an Amendment forever forbidding slavery 
in these States. Thanks to Jefferson Davis for that A little 
less mad, and you could to-day have held us by the throat, 
while you lashed your negroes in the Capitol. 

Four years ago Churches were torn ; sects dissected ; re- 
ligious societies divided, until we had a slaveholding, slave - 
defending religion; Free Press divines; others dumb on the 
great sin of oppression. It was well, for they branded them- 
selves corrupt. But now who so loud in their condemnation 
of dead BlsLYeryl who so brave in denouncing human bondage! 
Jefferson Davis you have healed up the Churches ; taught the 
ministers the pure gospel ; but really we do not know as we 
ought to be grateful to you for sending back your pack of 
hypocrites, just as cowardly and wicked as ever, into the com- 
pany of honest Christians. But never mind — the next moral 
battle that comes will point them out as betore. 

Four years ago we had for our distinguished leaders, Frank- 
lin Pierce, John B. Floyd, Toucey, Yancey, and James Buchan- 
an ; illustrious men ! Now we have Ulysses S. Grant, William 
Tecumseh Sherman, Philip Sheridan ; and in peaceful coun- 
cil equally honored and beloved Statesmen. The royal list of 
American heroes under the old regime ended with Henry Clay 
and Daniel Webster. The war began at once to shelve the 
effete relics, and ruling slaves of cotton, and called loudly for 
men. It tried thoroughly and patiently relay after relay of 
Generals. The American people tender and just toward all 
then* leaders, insisted that each should have a lair trial. Up 
came from all avenues of trade and artisanship, Scott, Mc- 
Dowell, Buell, McClellan, and Hooker. Each had a full 



20 Sermon Appkopriate to the 

and fair trial ; and each slowly sank with the pity of all the 
nation into comparative obscurity. We needed no more 
tricksters ; no more eloquent Generals. The war growing 
heavy, and and absorbing the largest armies the world had 
ever seen, called for men of work, of genius, of unselfish 
patriotism; of nerve, and courage and piety. And thank God 
they were found. Abraham Lincoln was not at first such a 
man. The war made him. It gave him a clearer headed 
statesmanship; it modified his mingled pliability and stub- 
bornness into a resolute will. It converted him to God. — 
General Sherman has been called out from among our thirty 
millions, as the one who can perform the most complicated 
marches and evolutions, and produce the most accurate com- 
binations, and eternally outflank everything, and make his foe 
feed him ; and do it all modestly, and give credit to his superi- 
or. Philip Shei'idan is given us as the young model of a 
new order of Young America ; piire, fearless, irresistible,? and 
modest. Sheridan and Custer gentle and loving as sisters, 
brave as only such gentle natures can be — brave as boasters 
never are ; are the twin children of Victory. But above them 
all, eminent in every grace and power of genius ; as complete a 
man as America has produced since Washington; the man that 
the war waited for ; the man that it would not do for the war to 
close without ; the man that unfound, the war could not close, 
is Ulysses S. Grant. In these few men, brought into promi- 
nence and power by the foi'ce of very merit, the nation pos- 
sesses a gift compensative for the whole war. We go into 
the contest leaderless, irresolute; with a race of effete. Godless, 
unpatriotic rulers; we come out having found a score of 
men, not only to lead us in war, but to rule us in peace. May 
Grant live, like Washington, to exercise in the councils of 
peace as benign an influence as in, the councils of war, — 
President of forty United States. 

Four years ago, a hound-chased fugitive, fleeing to the 
portico of our National Capitol, under the shadow of our 
Goddess of Liberty, kneeling and clinging to the granite steps, 
praying in the name of God and humanity, could be torn 
away and driven under lash and curse to the shambles, and 



Obsequies of Jefferson Davis. 21 

not even a Senator — not our President dare protect him. A 
slave might kneel on Plymouth Rock, and kissing its cold 
mementoes of liberty, pray that he might not be returned to 
an infuriated master, and to a grave in the rice swamps or the 
cotton fields of Legree. Yet a United States Marshal would 
manacle him, there, in the very lootprints of Winslow ; and 
a United States Judge would sentence him ; and a Unite d 
States police force would hand him back to bondage. 

A slave might then weep in the touching strains of Mrs. 
Browning : 

" I stand on the mark, beside the shore, 

Of the first white pilgrims bended knee, 
Where exile turned to ancestor ; 

And God was thanked for liberty. 
I have run thro' the night, my skin is as dark 
I bend my knee down on this mark, 

I look on the sky and the sea ! 

O pilgrim souls! I speak to you; 

I see you come out proud and slow. 
From the land of Spirits, pale as dew, 

And round me, and round nie ye go 
O pilgrims ! I have gasped and run, 
All night long, from the whips of one. 

Who in your names works sin and woe. 

And thus I thought that I would come, 

And kneel here, where ye knelt before. 
And feel your souls around me hum. 

In undertone, to the ocean's roar; 
And lift my black fiice, my black hand 
Here, in your names, to curse this land. 

Ye blessed in freedom's evermore. 



I am black! I am black! 

And yet God made me — they say. 
But if lie did so, smiling back. 

He must have cast his work away. 
Under the feet of his white creatures, 
With a lools of scorn, that the dusky features 

Might be trodden again to clay. 



And yet He has made dark things. 

To be glad and merry as light. 
There's a little dark bird, sits and sings; 

There's a dark stream ripples out of sight. 
And the dark frogs chant in the safe morass; 
And the sweetest stars are made to pass 

O'er the face of the darkest night. 



But WE who are dark, we are dark. 

Ah God we have no stars ! 
About our souls in care and cnrk. 

Our blackness shuts like prison bars : 
The poor souls crouch so far behind 
That never a comfort can they find. 

By reaching through the prison bars." 



22 Sermon Appropriate to the 

But to-day, the blackest man in America may kneel be- 
side the whitest on Plymouth Rock, and kiss it as the first 
mile-stone on the road to universal freedom ; and on the 
steps of the Capitol, he may stand as shackleless and inde- 
pendent as a Senator, — nay he may yet enter the doors as 
Senator. Thank Jefferson Davis for that ! 

Four years ago the black man was not a competent wit- 
ness. Now in the Supreme court of the United States a 
Senator introduces a lawyer black enough to be king of 
Congo, and the Chief Justice orders him sworn in as Attorney. 
Thank Jefferson Davis for that. 

Four years ago, Toombs pledged himself some day to cal 
his slave roll from Bunker Hill Monument. Let Massachusetts 
now invite him to fulfill his promise. Let him stand, the 
fossil of dead bondage, on the granite type of eternal free- 
dom. Let the old Bay State, in mass-meeting, be there to 
respond for the slave. Hear him ! "Bill ; very black, brand- 
ed on his left cheek with an S. " " Here ! here ! answer 
fifly thousand freemen from old Hampden. Here, by the grace 
of God, among us his brothers ; and that S on his cheek no 
longer means slave, but somebody." "Pompey ; six feet, well 
built, intelligent — a first-class carpenter." "Here ! here ! 
comes down a voice from the Berkshire hills ; here, and aa 
free as the air that whistles through the pines, that he shapes 
by his trade." "George ; almost white ; his back much cut 
up from having often run away, and been flogged." "Down 
here, growls the fisherman of Cape Cod ; down here, and 
when yon can count the sand along our shore, and the waves 
of our blue sea, you shall have him back again." "Pompey ; 
can read and write ; managed to steal his learning in spite of 
lashes." "Here, here, thunders Wendell Phillips, from among 
the Temples of Boston ; here and a lawyer pleading now for 
others rights instead of his own." And the spirits of the old 
Pilgrim Fathers, rise around Plymouth Rock, to answer to the 
call ; and Governor Winthrop, and Saintly Hooker, and the 
ancestors of free American Institutions, and Warren, and 
Putnam, and John Adams, and John Hancock, and old Miles 
Standish rise to wave down this dealer in human flesh ; this 
modern abortion of freedom. They wave him down from 



Obseques op Jeffekson Davis. 23 

that sacred spire of liberty ; and bid him follow dead slavery, 
into the dark tomb of the past, forever and forever. And 
Jesus Christ shall roll to the door a great stone sealed -'Liberty 
to the Captive." 

Four years ago a Northern Sheet published the following 
diatribe: "Abolitionism! This ism has a well earned name. 
It has abolished good feeling between the north and south. 
It has abolished the lives of tens of thousands of brave white 
men. It has abolished the Union. It has abolished happy 
homes for thousands of its darling negroes. It has abolished 
the Constitution. It has abolished peace and security. It has 
abolished the respect we commanded abroad as a nation. It 
has abolished some ot the best military officers of the age. It 
has abolished gold and silver coin. It has abolished low 
prices. It has abolished the Habeas-corpus. It has abolished 
the Trial by Jury. And finds itself at last, like Jean Paul's 
grandfather, exceeding poor and pious, with little left worth 
abolishing." 

Without contradicting these assertions, the time has now 
come for completing the list. It has abolished James Buch- 
anan, Franklin Pierce and the like ilk from the White House. 
It has abolished Hardee from Charlestown, Pemberton from 
Vicksburg, Buckner fi-om Donaldson, Beauregard from several 
places, Lee from Richmond. It has abolished black laws from 
our state statute books. It has abolished slave pens, and 
cat-o-nine-tails, and gang drivers, and manacles from the Capi- 
tal of the United States. It has abolished the infamous 
Fugitive Slave law and the Taney Dred Scott Decision. I 
has abolished human bondage from America. It has abolish. 
ed ignorance, and set up schools throughout the South. It has 
abolished the contempt in which we were held by foreign 
powers. It has abolished a mixed currency and breaking 
banks. It has abolished Nullification, Secession and Repudia- 
tion. It has abolished all the F. F. Vs and the conceit of 
aristocrats. It has abolished injustice, unrighteousness, and 
iniquity more in four years than seemed possible. Thank the 
Lord for Jefferson Davis, for without him Abolitionism would 
still be in the minority. And now thank God it nas abolished 
Jeff. too. 



24 Sermon Appropriate to the 

Four years ago Jefferson Davis made a speech to the Ala- 
baraians. In it he said, "The grass will grow in the northern 
cities, where the pavements have been worn by the tread of 
Commerce. We will carry war where it is easy to advance, 
where food for the sword and torch await the armies in densely 
populated cities." To day Sherman has just circumnavigated 
the whole Confederacy, capturing a string of Capitols, and his 
boys have helped wear down the luxuriant grass in a dozen 
Southern Cities. 

Four years ago. Parson Brownlow was a prisoner and then 
a fugitive ; plundered of his property, and in danger of his life. 
To-day he is governor of Tennessee; and Andrew Johnson, 
who could live in his native state, only with an army to defend 
him, is President of the United States. Four years ago, every 
man of northern birth was banished from the south, as an 
alien, or forced to serve in the ranks. It was even good foi'- 
tune to escape with lite, and without violence. To day, those 
who hanged and plundered, are begging rations of those they 
treated with savage barbarity. Four years ago millions of 
honest debts, owed to the north, were repudiated and all 
unionists plundered. To day, in the wake of war, every debt 
is to be collected, and every sufferer reimbursed from his perse- 
cutors. Four years ago the London Times declared, "The 
Great Republic is dead." English Lords, with illy concealed 
joy, uttered many a funeral oration at its obsequies. Now 
Lazarus steps forth from the tomb, with the new health that 
Jesus gives to the sorely tried. Is the young Repnblic dead? 
By the grace of God we believe it is but just at its majority. 
It was nearer dying when its President was an imbecile ; when 
its Senate contained a majority of traitors ; when fire-eaters 
hurled defiance at law from Halls of Congress ; when Floyd was 
peacably stealing our artillery and munitions of war, we were 
then fast disintegrating. It was doubtful whether we were 
anything more than thirty petty, independent principalities. 
The Constitution was used only as a fetter, to bind us from de- 
fending our nationality. But, thanks be to Jefferson Davis, he 
led off his horde of destructionists. He marshalled them in 
open warfare. He rid us of a secret, insidious, slow destruc- 
tion — and we are not dead. To day we stand, anticipating a 



Obsequies op Jefferson Davis. 25 

future more glorious than the past, a thousand fold. We see 
the pure flag, unshamed by bondage, unstained by blood, from 
mount Katandin to the Sierra-Nevada. We see a people, ce- 
mented by suffering as well as by prosperity; baptized by 
blood to a holier use of its liberties. 

We believe that we owe to this Revolution lessons that 
will be elements of strength. It has taught us that peace can- 
not be preserved by sacrificing the right. We have learned 
the value of Union, and a strong centralized Government. 
We have a sturdier, better-nerved national manhood. We 
have opened the fens of ignorance in the South, and taught 
them what we are. The people will henceforth be one, as 
as well as the soil. We have learned our power and resources- 
and yet we are a more modest, less boastful nation. We have 
shown our teeth to all the world ; and John Bull, looking in, 
has found them iron clad and double plated ; and yet we have 
little desire to become a warring Republic. 

Dead ! Dead ! We were sick. Slavery was a terrible dis- 
ease. By the help of Davis it is cut out ; the wound will soon 
heal. Our vitality is not gone. Purer, braver, truer, more 
Godly, we stand up to the task of another century. 

But to me, looking at this matter from the standpoint of a 
christian, by far the proudest achievement of the past four 
years, is our progress as a nation in righteousness. Then we 
were almost atheistic. Our public councils ignored the King 
of Kings. Now, however much we may mourn the intem- 
perance, profanity and licentiousness of the land ; yet there 
are, everywhere, individual evidences that this nation is grow- 
ing toward God, Our coin comes to us with a stamp, that 
says, they have found God in the mint, down among the money 
bags. Our President, trusting in policy at the outset, or only 
coldly acknowledging his dependence on a higher power, 
showed in every new state paper, a growth in faith, humility 
and finally, in love for God. Wall Street, that used only to 
sing, praise Cotton from which all blessings flow; can noAv sing, 
Praise God from whom all blessings flow. There never was 
an army before with so many christian Generals in it, — though 
at the outset we were led by those of a very different order. 
Converted on the field too, many of them. Our politicians, 



26 Seemon Appeopeiatb to the 

Avith apparent faith, are frequent in their references to Provi- 
dence. The nation feels that God has saved it. It sees the 
hand of God in the course of the war so evident that it cannot 
deny it. 

Such my fellow citizens has been the work of the past four 
years ; it has been the work of fifty ! We are now really 
living, where but for Jefferson Davis, we should have been 
living in the twentieth century. A mad aristocrat ; leading a 
horde of mad slaveholders ; ambitions, stubborn ; blind with 
rage, and hate, and pride, and love of power, has been our 
Pharaoh. God has been our pillar of fire by night, and our 
cloud by day ; Lincoln om- Moses ; and Johnson follows to 
perfect the work. 

Since writing this sermon, I have come acfoss the obituary 
of an old colored woman, who confirms my view of the rebel 
potentate. Peggy was her name ; and aright shrewd observer 
was she. Her chief fear was lest the rebels should get less 
than they deserved. Her prayer was, "Oh Lord save Jeff. 
Davis, because he is the best friend the colored people ever 
had. He is the soul of the rebellion. Take him away, or Idll 
him and things will fall right back into the old ways. May the 
Lord preserve Jeff. Davis, to keep up the fight, tiU the slave- 
holders are so whipped that they'll never crow again." Peggy 
had no idea of our fighting a great war and yet standing at 
its close just where we stood at the outset. Nor do we. It 
seems like an age since we began the contest. We have lived 
in deeds not years. God has made the wrath of man to praise 
him. 

And now, Jefferson Davis, we are done With you ! It 
matters little whether you find yotir soar apple tree to-morrow, 
or next week, — or whether like the wandering Jew, God pro- 
long your accursed life, a wandering vagabond, praying for a 
death that you dread, and living a life you still more dread. 
Poetic justice would be fulfilled, should some one of your in- 
furiated dupes slay you in your flight, and give you a dogs 
burial, — then, as the Romans said of King Romulus, when he 
was suddenly missing, The Gods have translated him to the 
ekies, so should posterity say of you. The devils have translated 
him to Hell. We bury you this night, under the curses of twenty 



Obsequies of jEfTERsoN Davis. 27 

millions of people ; we heap on you the execrations of five 
hundred thousand widows ; we attend your funeral with an 
army of one million of the fatherless. The ghosts of two 
million, slain by your ambition, rise from bloody graves, 
armless, headless, gory, to greet you to the Judgment. 
All those who weep for Abraham Lincoln, rejoice at your 
destruction. Four millions of your late chattels, chant your 
requiem in a shout of jubilee. Oh Jefferson Davis, this world 
execrates you! It has had enough of you ! It consigns you by 
the unanimous vote of loyalty to the world where God con- 
fines his rebels. We will dig your grave in the center of the 
prison pen at Anderson ville. We will build you a monument 
of the skulls and skeletons of the sixty thousand you starved 
to death. We will write high, high, on the fearful pile Aaron 
Burr, Benedict Arnold, and above them all Jafferson Davis. — 
This from the American people, to him who sought to be king 
of a nation of slaves ; but by the grace of God, became the 
great emancipator. And then we wiU hedge in forever, that 
hellish cemetry, and sow it to all briors, thorns, thistles and 
nettles ; and through it shall creep the vile copperhead and 
lizard; and cursed be he that ever tills one foot of the soil, 
forever and forever. 



J'f(hr. /Oo 



RJe'!3 



